World Economic Performance: Facts, Theories and Controversies

Just when towards the end of the 1960s observers in many parts of the world thought that the problem of maintaining satisfactory economic performance had been largely solved, events during the 1970s changed to such an extent that few people, if any, would now argue that the performance of the world economy has been satisfactory subsequently. Even such a general statement as this raises a myriad of questions. For example, was economic performance in fact so good during the 1950s and 1960s or is our view of those years tinged by undeserved nostalgia? If performance was good, how can we explain it? Can the performance of these years be regarded as the norm from which the seventies and early eighties are an annoying but temporary aberration, or were the fifties and sixties a special case? In what sense has recent global economic performance been unsatisfactory, and what may be done to improve matters? There is sufficient material here to fill many books, let alone pages. We are, therefore, forced to be selective and to ignore many of the relevant issues.